The new Hydrangea cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the inventor, Jos de Jong in the Netherlands. The objective of the breeding program was to identify new Hydrangea varieties with darker foliage. The mutation resulting in the new variety was discovered by the inventor during August of 2012 at a commercial nursery in Boskoop, the Netherlands.
The parent is the unpatented commercial variety Hydrangea macrophylla ‘Black Diamond Baroque Angel’. The inventor grew large quantities of plants of the parent variety and selected for naturally occurring branch mutations with darker foliage and different flower colors.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar ‘JON02’ by softwood cuttings was first performed during the Summer of 2012 at a commercial greenhouse in Boskoop, the Netherlands. Subsequent propagation has shown that the unique features of this cultivar are stable and reproduced true to type in two successive generations.